How Is This My Life?
by Elrond's Scribe
Summary: Superpower AU of Glee, starting with "Yes/No" halfway through Season 3. The New Directions try to hide their freaky new powers, make it through Nationals, and survive high school - being heroes was never the plan, after all. But life seems to have other ideas. A special focus on Joe Hart and his Christianity. Rated for language and violence. Undergoes constant edits and re-writes.
1. Chapter 1: The First Hints of Trouble

**Welcome to the first revamp of this fic, and it is a major revamp! This is the new Chapter 1, to provide what I feel are some necessary parts of the story.  
**

 **To rehash the relevant opening comments:**

 **This fic starts on the tail end of _An Extraordinarily Merry Christmas_ , and is basically an AU of Season 3 from _Yes/No_ onward. It's not technically a crossover, but is like the MCU in that there are such things as superpowers and agencies that employ/empower/exploit powered people in this universe. However, as there has yet to be the equivalent of an Avengers incident, superpowers are not yet openly acknowledged. Yet.**

 **I don't know whose family Sam is supposed to be staying with. I'm sure the Hudson-Hummels have all the goodwill in the world, but if Finn and Kurt have to share a room they probably don't have space for another 'temporary son', plus they're probably a bit occupied with Burt running for Congress. In this fic I have Sam staying with the Abramses.**

 **I can't ascertain how long it would realistically take for a middle-class Irish family to all get visas to come to the States, or if they would be qualified for emergency visas. I've heard it can take all of a week, and I've heard it can take 60 days or longer. I don't think Rory's is the kind of situation where he would need to go home early, but I do think his family would probably want to come and put their eyes on him - in person.**

 **I don't know about the shelter in An Extraordinarily Merry Christmas, but when I went to Pacific Garden Mission with a group three years ago, we couldn't just randomly walk in. I and my entire group had to be given handwritten name tags (which we weren't allowed to remove) and buzzed in at the front door. And when we were finished we had to all be counted up and let out through the same entrance we'd been buzzed in by.**

 **Anyway, all rights belong to Ryan Murphy, much as I resent the mess that he and the other writers have made of the show. Warning for some family fluff, and for one choice word dropped.  
**

* * *

It had all begun on the night of the meal at the homeless shelter (and the filming of the PBS Christmas special). The accident had left people startled and shaken, though nobody had been killed or even obviously hurt.

The only people who had been in the confirmed danger zone were the McKinley High School glee club (the New Directions by name), who'd been checking out of the shelter, and none of them were visibly injured. Nevertheless they had all been rushed to hospital, where they were first quarantined for a solid week and then carefully examined and tested. The results were varied, and in some cases rather startling . . .

* * *

 _Snap!_

Finn Hudson gaped in astonishment at the needle that the broken pieces of the needle in the nurse's hands. He looked at his mother, and saw that she was staring too. Okay, so it's not just me. "Uh, is that normal?" he asked the nurse tentatively.

The young man in scrubs was visibly flummoxed. "Er, no," he said uncertainly. "No, that's no normal, I - let me just get another one, okay?" And he darted to the counter to dispose of the broken needle, change his gloves, and pick out a fresh needle. "Here we go!" he said, and for the second time attempted to pierce Finn's arm. And for the second time, the needle stopped with the point not quite touching the skin, going no further. Most amazingly of all, the same tiny dot of brilliant bluish-white light surrounded the point of the needle - Finn stifled a gasp, for he felt a little prickle of warmth along his arm. The nurse pushed harder on the needle - it bent, and broke with another snap.

The nurse looked equally embarrassed and confused. "I'm really sorry," he said. "Let me just try to do this one more time."

"Or you could get a doctor," said Carole, eyebrows still arched.

"Yeah, I'll do that," said the man, and practically fled the hospital room.

Finn looked beseechingly at his mother, who could only throw up her hands. "I don't know, Finn," she said.

"Am I gonna be okay?" asked Finn in a small voice, trying not to sound as scared as he felt.

Carole bit her lip, unable to speak. It had been far too recently that she'd nearly lost both her sons.

* * *

"His BMR is _how_ fast?" asked Maia Puckerman sharply.

"Three times higher than what it should be," reiterated the doctor, a tall man with glasses by the name of Graham. "For a young man his age and weight."

Maia's son Noah - Puck to all friends and associates - looked blank. "So?"

"So you now need to consume a bare minimum of seven thousand calories every day, and more is better," said Dr. Graham.

"I'm guessing that's super high?" asked Puck cautiously.

"And that's not all," continued Dr. Graham, addressing Maia rather than Puck. "He also seems to have a similarly heightened cellular regeneration rate - he heals very quickly, among other things," he amended when the woman arched her eyebrows. "Actually, it looks as if all of his body's systems are running three to four times as fast as they should be."

"What does that mean?" asked Maia with not a little apprehension.

Dr. Graham pursed his lips. "Mrs. Puckerman, can you be discreet?"

* * *

"You guys didn't have to come all the way up here," said Sam Evans a little thickly through his mother's relentless hug.

"Yes we did!" insisted Stacy, the baby of the family. "You got hurt, Sammy! We were _scared_."

"You're our son," said Sam's mother Mary into his hair. "Of course we had to!"

"I wasn't scared!" said kid brother Stevie indignantly. "I knew you were gonna be okay all along!"

"He kept saying that," put in father Dwight. "Said his big brother Sam doesn't get hurt by anything." His smile was tremulous. "I wish I had that kind of confidence, because for a minute there I sure did think we'd lost you."

Mary, having finally released Sam, took a step back to look him over properly - and when she did she got a horrible shock. "What is that on your arms?!" she cried sharply.

For starting about halfway up Sam's forearms and circling entirely round each arm were tattooed patterns of brown-and-white feathers.

Sam began protesting. "Mom, I don't know how all that got there, I swear!" he said earnestly.

"Really?" snorted Dwight. "You _don't know_ how you got tattoos all over your arms?"

There was a cough from the doorway, and a nurse who was too young to really be middle-aged and too old to really be young advanced into the room. "Mr. and Mrs. Evans?" she said. "We don't believe the markings are tattoos."

"Oh, they're not?" said Mary disbelievingly. "What are they, then?"

"We don't actually know," came the surprising reply. "The markings started appearing out of nowhere the second day after the accident."

Dwight and Mary looked at each other. Then they looked at Sam, and back at the nurse. "You're not kidding, are you?" said Dwight.

* * *

Tina Cohen-Chang first began to hear the voices the third day after the accident.

They were like little ghostly wisps of conversation, floating indistinctly around her head. She thought they were her imagination at first, and tried to ignore them. But the wisps became threads, and the threads became longer and began to intertwine, and soon multiple streams of near-endless chatter were buzzing in her ears.

She wondered if she was going crazy, but took a sliver of comfort in the fact that the voices never (well, very rarely) actually seemed to address her directly. They just chattered away about work and school and home life, little grievances and little joys and shocking secrets, funny (or stupid) YouTube videos and all manner of things both mundane and outright strange. They spoke about ten times as fast as even swift-tongued Rachel could say anything aloud, but this only occurred to Tina gradually - she was still mainly concerned that she couldn't seem to stop hearing the voices at all.

Or maybe 'voices' wasn't the right word - they didn't sound quite like human voices should, and they never seemed to properly 'talk out loud.'

"Do you hear people talking?" she asked cautiously of her mother the day after she was released from quarantine and permitted to have visitors.

"No, honey," said Rita Cohen, peering anxiously at her daughter. "Why?"

"No reason," said Tina, now certain that nobody was hearing the voices except for herself. She wondered again if she was losing her mind, and if so, whether it was a worse idea to speak up about it (and thus be subjected to the inquiries of a shrink) or to go raving mad in silence. She ended up keeping quiet - no reason to borrow trouble, she told herself.

* * *

"So there's nothing wrong with me?" asked Rachel Berry, nearly in tears with relief. "I can go home now?"

* * *

It wasn't that Rory Flanagan wasn't glad to see his family - he was, for he had missing them sorely. But he was already sick to death of being hovered over, and Dad, Mam, and Marie had only arrived two days ago.

They'd all got themselves emergency visas in double quick time as soon as they'd heard of the accident, and Rory had barely got out of quarantine before they all arrived, nearly frantic with worry. Most of their fears were assuaged when they saw for themselves that he was physically (to all appearances) uninjured, and was only being held in the hospital for testing. All the same, he had a hard time convincing them to let him finish his year in America.

Marie spoke for Mam and Dad when she said, "Look here, we just came within a hair's breadth of losing you, and we aren't none of us keen on leaving you with an ocean between us again."

"At least we're staying for Christmas," Dad insisted.

"All right, then," said Rory, flopping back in concession against the tilted-up hospital bed and in so doing striking the hand control by accident.

There was a little white spark like a shock, and the controller was left blackened on one side and making a vague sizzling noise.

Rory snatched his arm back in surprise, staring at his hand. He was sure he had felt a current run through his arm that was like and yet entirely unlike a normal electric shock.

* * *

After being released from quarantine, Santana Lopez was always asking for water.

She would say that she was thirsty, because the truth would have been so much harder to explain. The first time anyone had brought her an actual cup of water after the accident (in quarantine she'd had an IV), a weird little rush had surged through her body, making her skin tingle and her eyes sharpen and her head feel clearer. She'd given a little gasp of surprise, prompting an inquiry of "Is something wrong?" from the woman who'd brought her the meal tray.

"N-no, I'm fine," Santana had stuttered.

When she'd cautiously begun drinking the water, everything felt perfectly normal, and gradually the rush had faded away.

Her first shower was even stranger. The rush of energy was stronger this time, and she was reminded of that time she'd gotten hopped up on 'Vitamin D' back in sophomore year. But this rush was different - it started in the left side of her chest, and flowed along her arms and down her legs and up the back of her head. The water droplets did strange things around her body as she moved, clumping themselves into odd little shapes that hovered and twitched in the air far longer than they had a right to before splattering on the floor.

After that, Santana asked for water whenever she could get it, prompting some funny looks from the hospital staff. Having it nearby would always leave her feeling rejuvenated and refreshed (and often restless). Whenever she drank, the 'buzz' would eventually fade away, though it always left her feeling relatively normal and never weak or shaky.

She told her parents nothing of this - why worry them? - and even kept her little oddities hidden from the hospital staff. The only thing that they evidently noticed was that her vitals looked very good - unusually good, in fact. For her own part, Santana had had enough of hospital gowns and hospital meals to last her a decade, and she waited impatiently to be released to go home.

* * *

"How do you feel?" asked Julia Chang of her son. Young Michael had recently been released from quarantine, and she and her husband had spent the previous days getting every detail they could about Mike's condition.

"I feel -" Mike paused, and a smile tugged at his lips. "- like I wanna get out of this bed, for starters -"

Neither Julia nor Michael Sr. could quite hide their grimaces, and Mike saw. "Just a figure of speech," he went on hastily. "Seriously though, I feel great, like nothing ever happened."

"That's good to hear," said Dr. Graham, who had just walked in with a clipboard. "Because there's something that all of you need to know right away."

* * *

 _"Meanwhile, our local community is only just recovering its breath from the scare at the shelter last week, in which a number of visiting teenagers were believed to be the victims of an unknown airborne chemical,"_ Andrea Carmichael was reporting. _"We are now happy to report that the kids are apparently okay, with no discernible ill effects. . ."_

Two men sat in an office cubicle in front of the screen of a desktop, watching the news segment with grim faces. "How did this happen?" asked the elder accusingly of the younger.

"I don't know, sir," said the younger man stoically.

"You don't know?" the older man, who seemed to be the other's superior, flung up his hands. "You were supposed to _end to a possible threat_. Instead you manage to _activate a ticking time bomb_ , and you don't know how it happened!"

"It won't happen again, sir," said the subordinate.

The superior stood up, scowling his displeasure. "It damn well better not!" he growled as he left the room.

The younger agent waited until he was alone, and then picked up his phone and sent a text which he promptly deleted.

PROJECT 271-C5 ACTIVATED.

* * *

 **Once again, this is actually the first chapter (I don't know how FFN will initially display it).**


	2. Chapter 2: But Superpowers Don't Exist!

**This isn't a new chapter, just a revised version of what was Chapter 1. More edits afoot, though much less drastic here.**

 **Again, I repeat some of my original opening comments:**

 **The decision to homeschool is one that has consequences that are legal as well as "social." To homeschool Joe in Ohio, his mother (usually the more involved parent) would have to start by notifying her school district's superintendent of her intent to homeschool her son at the beginning of every school year. Then during the year she'd have to preserve samples of Joe's academic work and keep a log of the lesson hours he completed (of which 900 are required per year). Then at the end of the year she'd have to put all that stuff in a binder and hand it to a state-certified or -licensed teacher, who would review it, approve it, and prepare a written narrative of Joe's yearly progress for the school district. Then the district's superintendent would also have to review and approve Joe's work so that he could move forward to the next grade. Plus, he'd have to attend a public or private high school for his final year anyway in order to get a diploma. (I know that that's changed recently, but back in 2011-2012 it was still the case.)**

 **All of which to say, this business of Joe transferring from homeschooling straight to public high school in the middle of the year is getting tossed out the window. In this 'verse, Joe is a senior who has been at McKinley since the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, or all of Season 3. Oh, and his dad runs a Christian bookstore - I don't see selling Bibles door-to-door providing enough income to support a family.**

 **A slight addition to one of the God Squad members' powers here.**

 **All rights belong to Ryan Murphy and the** _ **Glee**_ **writers, and may they be cursed with the same headaches that their insanely inconsistent writing gave me. Warning for a little Bible thumper talk.**

* * *

Joe Hart had, like all the other McKinley High glee club kids, patiently endured the weeks of testing that the hospital subjected him to. As they hadn't been able to find anything immediately dangerous, they'd sent him and the other kids home in time for school to start up again. Naturally, Joe had thought then that everything would die down, and for a time, it seemed to.

If, that is, you didn't count the _weird_ little things.

Like the first day back at school, when he'd gotten into trouble because Mom had come into his room to get him up for school and found his window open. Joe had no idea how this had happened, and of course neither Mom or Dad believed him when he said so.

Or how about that Wednesday when he was drying dishes for Mom, and he could have sworn the forks and knives actually left his his hand and laid themselves in the drawer?

Not to mention the Thursday that he'd got up in the middle of homework to go to the bathroom, only to find when he returned that his history textbook, which he had thought he'd left open, was shut and piled on top of his other books.

But it was at the end of his first week back at school when Mom came in one morning, again to wake him up, and found him _floating in the air_ two feet above his bed. She screamed, which woke Joe up, and when he saw where he was, he screamed too. Dad, who had been on his way out the door, came running upstairs to see what was the matter. He stopped dead, his jaw swinging.

They might well have remained like that for the next quarter of an hour if Dad hadn't almost instantly snapped out of it, marched up to Joe, and plucked him out of the air. The moment he touched Joe, the boy fell down onto the bed, where he lay gaping at his father.

Needless to say, he was late for school.

Later that very day, two of the big hockey jocks slammed Joe into the lockers as they walked past, calling, "Hey, hobo! Find a job yet?" as they went.

Already on edge because of what had happened that morning, Joe suddenly wished with all his might that he could send _them_ sailing into the wall, and see how _they_ liked it. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than both the jocks went flying sideways into the lockers, their heads banging the steel so hard they fell unconscious to the floor.

Joe froze to the spot, nearly screaming with fright, and even as teachers arrived on the scene and began getting help, he couldn't shake the conviction that, somehow, _he_ had done this to the boys. He was lucky that no one had taken notice of him at the moment, for the policy against violence was very strictly enforced and he probably would have been expelled.

He didn't speak to anyone at school, but later at home he tearfully spilled the whole story to his parents. Both Dad and Mom looked troubled, and while they tried to be reassuring Joe didn't miss the fear in their eyes. He had never seen them out of their depth like this before, not even during the times when the store came in danger of going bankrupt, and he couldn't help feeling horribly guilty, even though Mom kept telling him that none of this was his own fault.

Now Joe blessed his near-total friendlessness at school. If he'd been any more popular, or if Mr. Schuester and the other New Directioners weren't in the habit of completely ignoring him, his "incidents" would certainly have been noticed, and he might have found himself in a very difficult place. As it was, he'd been spending each school day expecting to be called suddenly into Principal Figgins' office at any moment for violating the no-violence policy.

And then, that very Sunday when it came time for the sermon, Pastor Russell asked the congregation to open their Bibles to Matthew chapter 25, verse 14. The moment Joe saw the passage about to be read, he nearly fell out of his chair. _For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, every man according to his several ability . . ._

Joe knew the parable like the back of his hand. But that day he read it as if he'd never seen it before, and when he came to the man with the buried talent, he shivered.

 _Hey, I was scared of what you'd do to me,_ the man seemed to say. _I didn't want to get it wrong, so I played it safe._

And his boss called him _wicked_ and _lazy_.

 _God, is this what you're telling me? That You don't actually want me to suppress whatever this is? That You gave this to me?_

Pastor Russell's voice broke in on his racing thoughts: "Look, God doesn't reward 'playing it safe.' He doesn't reward laziness or cowardice. He rewards courage, faith, and action, even if you don't always 'get it right'. You have to do what you already know God would have you do. And you've got to trust that if you're not exactly where He wants you to be, if you need to be scooted three degrees to the left, He'll scoot you."

Once they got home from church, the Hart family all looked at each other.

"I don't think that message was a coincidence, Joe," said Dad.

"No kidding!" said Joe. "But what do we do now?"

Mom looked thoughtful. "You've said you feel like you're somehow _causing_ things to move when you're not touching them," she said. "What if that's true? What if you _are_ actually making these things happen?"

Joe bit his lip. "I - I don't do it on purpose," he said unhappily.

"Then maybe that's the problem," suggested Dad. Mom shot him a questioning look, but he took no notice. "Maybe, because you aren't in control of whatever this is, it's acting out on its own."

Joe began to feel as if he'd entered the twilight zone. "But Dad, this is _reality!_ Things like superpowers don't exist!" He looked to his mother for help.

But Mom said, "That's what I would've said, before I witnessed my child hovering in the air, and that was just the beginning."

"Oh," Joe grimaced. "That happened, didn't it?"

"Oh yeah, that happened," said Mom. "And you said you felt like it was you who slammed those hockey kids into the wall. And lately I've watched things literally come to your hand when you decide you want them. I never thought I'd say this, but . . . it seems like the most logical explanation."

The foundations of Joe's world, already wobbling precariously in the wake of the aforementioned incidents (accidents?), began to collapse entirely. "But that would mean that I have _powers_ ," he protested weakly. "And _that_ would mean that God _gave_ me powers, and _that_ would mean that He wants me to _use_ them, and that would be _weird!_ "

Dad eyed him. "Pretty much, yeah. Look, this is just as weird for me as it is for you, Joe."

"So test it," ordered Mom.

"Wh- now?" spluttered poor flummoxed Joe.

"Yes, now," said Mom. "Try to make something move."

Joe eyed the pile of Bibles and Sunday School books on the table. He concentrated on the smallest Bible - his own, a black pocket-sized KJV - and tried to _will_ it to move. For a few seconds nothing happened; then suddenly something in Joe's brain shifted, and the Bible wiggled a little. He raised his hand experimentally; the Bible sailed through the air and smacked his palm, bouncing off and falling to the floor.

Dad and Mom looked at each other, and then back at Joe. Feeling like the world as he knew it had completely shattered, Joe snatched his Bible up off the floor and clutched it like a security blanket.

It was Mom who spoke first. "Well, there's your answer, Joe," she said.

Dad seemed to be thinking deeply. "These incidents started happening after the accident right before Christmas, didn't they?"

Joe cast his mind back over all the instances he could remember of things moving seemingly on their own - or, as was now obvious, his accidentally moving things without knowing it - and realized that his father was exactly right. "You mean the accident _caused_ me to get these - powers?" He was still stumbling a bit over the word.

"And if it did," said Mom. "what about all those other children who were in the 'danger zone'? Could something similar have happened to _them?_ "

* * *

The next Tuesday, which was the day that the God Squad had their meetings, Joe took stock of the group. It was, as always, only the four of them - himself, Sam, and Quinn with Mercedes at the helm. Quinn fiddled with her rings incessantly and wasn't quite her usual snarky self. Sam was acting weirdly gruff around Mercedes; Mercedes wouldn't so much as look him in the eye. Joe had occasionally noticed similar patterns between those two in previous God Squad meetings and glee practices.

He bit his lip as he looked at them all. Should he speak out? Now that he thought hard about, many of the New Directioners hadn't been quite themselves lately. And they'd all been hit by the blast. If Dad was right, and if Mom was right . . .

He raised his hand, and Mercedes turned to him. "Yes, Joe?"

 _Here I go._ "Have any of you guys noticed weird things happening around you since the accident?" he asked.

Sam eyed him with a strange mixture of curiosity and nervousness. "Define weird."

"Uh, like your window opening randomly during the night, or something isn't where you left it, or things floating out of your hand - yeah, that kinda thing."

He had been mostly expecting - and half hoping - to get raised eyebrows and mocking snickers in response to this. Instead, Mercedes pursed her lips, picked up a pencil, gripped it for a moment, and tossed it into the air.

Upon which it exploded with a little burst of color, making the other three jump with surprise.

"Or like that?" Mercedes asked Joe.

Joe managed a nod. "Yeah, I guess," he croaked. "I, uh, I thought it was just me."

"Definitely not," Quinn confirmed. She pressed her hands to the surface of the table at which she sat, and the entire table quivered and shook. A cracking noise made the others jump again, and Quinn lifted her hands hastily. The shaking stopped. "I've shaken the foundations of my house in my sleep," she said. "My mom is terrified of me, and she doesn't know what to do."

"How come you've kept it hidden when you're at school, then?" asked Mercedes, gaping at the other girl as if she herself hadn't just made a pencil explode like a firecracker.

"I've discovered that the worst episodes are always when I'm upset," returned Quinn evenly. "so I don't let myself get upset in public anymore."

Worry for her and for Mercedes gnawed at Joe, mingled with shame that his head had been so full of his own troubles that he'd entirely missed theirs. "Is that possible?"

"So far it has been," said Quinn matter-of-factly. "I assume you have a reason for asking, Joe. Do you have anything to share?"

Joe held out his hand, and the eraser sitting on the chalkboard shelf sailed into it.

"Lucky you," was all Mercedes said. "At least yours looks harmless."

"Harmless?" Joe put down the eraser. "Do you remember last Friday when the two guys on the hockey team hit their heads on the lockers and had to go to the hospital?"

"Sure, what's that got to do with -"

"Mercedes, that was _me!_ " cried Joe. "Don't you get it? My 'thing' where I move stuff without touching it works on everything - people too! I almost killed those jocks, 'cause I don't know how to control my - okay, I'll say it, my powers!"

"You seriously think we have superpowers," snarked Quinn.

"That's what my parents think, anyway," said Joe heavily, dragging his hands over his dreadlocks. "And it sounds like the craziest thing in the world, but what would _you_ call it?"

"Whoa, stop, back up," said Sam. "Your _parents_ got you believing the superpower shtick?"

"Yeah," sighed Joe. "They're being really Professor Kirke-ish about the whole thing."

"Professor who-ish?" inquired Quinn.

"Never mind," said Joe. _Shoulda known better than to make an obscure Narnia reference._ "What about you, Sam? Has everything been normal for you, or -"

Sam glanced at the closed door, and began taking off his jacket. "Okay, guys, you gotta trust me here, I'm doing this for a reason," he said as he began to unbutton his plaid shirt. The other three eyed him dubiously (Mercedes rather sternly) as he took off his shirt and then his undershirt.

"Whoa, what's with all the tattoos?" cried Quinn.

Sam's upper chest and arms clear down to just above the wrists were covered with brown-and-white feather designs.

"They're not tattoos," said Sam. "Watch." His arms came down to his sides, and the other three gasped yet again as the "ink" feathers sprang up from his skin and became real feathers. And before they'd had the chance to realize that Sam's body was covered with actual feathers, there was a great flap, and the feathers spread out from his back and shoulders and became huge, eagle-like _wings_.

Distantly, a part of Joe's brain informed him that underneath the honest-to-goodness _wings_ sprouting from his friend's shoulders, his chest and arms were looked perfectly normal (but as usual very well toned), no tattoos in sight.

It was Quinn who first recovered herself. "So," she remarked dryly. "You can fly. Anything else?"

"Yeah, but I can't do it in a closed room," said Sam, while great wings folded down to hug his upper body, and disappeared into the feather markings that looked like tattoos."I really have to be outside."

"Okay then," Joe pushed. "It's not like school's still in session. C'mon." He made Sam and the two girls bundle into their jackets and hats and scarves and go outside (it was winter).

Sam gritted his teeth. "Stay here," he said to the others, and walked a fair distance out from the building. "You asked for this, spider head," he called out to Joe.

And then, a gust of wind tore across the distance between Sam and the school building, so powerful that it nearly swept Joe and Quinn and Mercedes off their feet. They staggered against the wall behind them, pushing at it for support while the wind howled angrily around them, pushing them to the ground. And for one tiny shameful moment, Joe thought they were going to die.

But after a few minutes the wind died away as suddenly as it had started (it had not been a windy day to begin with), and Sam marched back over to them.

"You asked," he said in a low voice. "Now you know." And he walked past them and back into the school.

Quinn, Mercedes, and Joe all looked at each other, and without saying a word all made the same decision. They went after Sam, and found him sitting in the empty classroom where they'd been having their meeting. He was staring glumly at nothing.

"Do your parents know?" asked Mercedes gently.

"Oh yeah, they know," said Sam grimly. "The markings started randomly appearing after the accident, and when my family came to see me, well -" he shrugged. "The doctors have a hunch that the accident might have had something to do with the wings. They don't know about the other thing."

Quinn looked at him sharply. "The accident - that's what the doctor said to my mom too. I mean, I don't recall having an incident before then."

"Neither do I," said Mercedes.

 _Looks like Dad and Mom were onto something._ "Guys," said Joe seriously. "Everybody in glee club was in the 'danger zone' that night, and everybody went to the hospital. If the accident really caused these powers -"

"Oh, crap," Sam put a hand over his mouth. "You're saying you think _everybody in glee club_ had something like this happen to them?"

"Well, there's only one way to find out," said Quinn resolutely. "We have to ask them."

"Gee, that's gonna be fun," said Sam glumly.

* * *

 **A note on the timing: a Glee timeline on Tumblr (which may not be entirely true to the show, but is synced with a real calendar, so I'm using it) says that the kids went back to school on January 3rd, a Tuesday. That timeline also states that Will proposed to Emma on January 19th, a Thursday just over two weeks later. This God Squad meeting takes on Tuesday January 10th, during the kids' second week back at school and nine days before the Awesome Proposal.**


	3. Chapter 3: The Secrets Come Out, Part 1

**Again, this isn't a new chapter, this is a revised version of what was Chapter 2.**

 **To rehash relevant opening comments again:**

 **In the** _ **Glee**_ **pilot, Rachel claims to record and upload a video of herself every single day, to stay sharp. I don't know if this is one of those little jokes about how obsessive she is about her art, or if this was really supposed to be the case, but it seems wildly unrealistic - one a week is more than enough to keep anybody hopping who also goes to school. (And maintains a 3.86 GPA, keeps her boyfriend sexually satisfied, and whatever else she whined about having to do in** _ **Props**_ **.) So, I've scaled back her uploading schedule to once a week.**

 **All rights belong to . . . Ryan Murphy and _those Glee writers_. May they be repaid in full for all the headaches their work has been giving me.**

* * *

For the first time since coming home from the hospital, Rachel set up her iPhone on its selfie stick tripod. She turned it on, pressed the 'record' button, and took a breath Then, softly at first, she began to sing. " _You shout it out, but I don't hear a word you say. I'm talking loud, not saying much. . ._ "

Some might see the choice of song as a wishful fantasy, a desire to make herself into a heroine for surviving the accident. Let them laugh! She had come through her first brush with death, and she was alive. What did their ignorant opinions matter?

Triumph filled her soul as she reached the second half of the chorus. " _You shoot me down, but I won't fall, I am titani -_ oh!"

She ended abruptly with a gasp of shock. At the high E-flat (the literal high point of the chorus), she felt a sensation almost like a mild electric shock had rushed her body, and something open in the back of her throat that she couldn't describe. A shrill sound, like an unbelievably loud overtone, screeched over the note; the mirror on top of her dresser shattered.

Trembling, Rachel edged away from the broken mirror until her back hit the opposite wall.

 _What just happened? Did I do that? How did I do that?!_

"Rachel?" called Hiram up the stairs. "Honey, is everything okay?"

Rachel jumped. "I'm fine, Dad!" she shouted hastily, and she snatched her phone off the tripod. She picked up a plastic bag from a recent shopping trip to begin cleaning up the shards of glass on her bedroom floor, trying to ignore the warm, slightly "buzzy" feeling in her limbs and the conviction that something was very, very different.

* * *

Sugar stared around her bedroom, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. She then looked beside her at the large "hole" in the air through which she'd just walked. There it was - the girls' bathroom at school, where she'd previously been her hands. She stepped cautiously back through the hole - leaving her bedroom and returning to the school bathroom.

"Seriously?" she said aloud. "I was totally kidding about wishing I could teleport!"

* * *

Tina was sure of it - the dreams were worse than the voices.

That first dream hadn't really been that noteworthy, and she might not have remembered it at all except for how vivid it was. She dreamed that she was walking out of History a few feet behind Sam, and that Sam happened to pass by Mercedes. He paused just behind her, and then stiffened and walked by more quickly. Mercedes glanced over her shoulder at him, bit her lip, and hurried in the other direction. And that was the whole dream - nothing more.

What was really odd was what happened the following day. She was walking out of History, and as it happened she was walking behind Sam. She the exact scene play out in front of her at school. It was a replica - you might say a frame-by-frame copy - of her dream, down to Sam's McKinley letterman jacket and the fashionable boots on Mercedes' feet.

Tina gaped at the pair, and then shook her head to clear it. Definitely weird.

The next time she had a vivid dream that she remembered with perfect clarity after waking up, she grabbed an empty notebook and hastily scribbled the dream down, making a note of the date. And a mere two days later, her dream once again played out in reality - this time, it was of a Cheerios practice routine, with Coach Sylvester berating the squad as she reportedly always did. Tina slipped into the back of the gym where the Cheerios practiced after her classes were over, and watched them until Coach Sylvester noticed her and barked at her to get out "before my Cheerios get infected by your obvious inability to decide whether you're an irrelevant Asian goth or irrelevant Asian punk."

She'd have thought the whole thing was déja vu, if she hadn't had a record of the dream.

Throughout the next week she continued to record the dreams that she remembered, and she watched many of them come true before her eyes - but not all of them. Those that didn't were particularly confusing - there was one that looked like a very young Blaine Anderson, being berated for his diction and "encouraged" to improve by an older boy who resembled him; and another that looked like Mr. Schuester arguing with his ex-wife Terri as if they were still married.

Meanwhile, the ever-present voices were growing ever 'louder' and more distracting. When she'd initially gone back to school, they'd been so numerous that they nearly deafened her (if 'deafening' was the right word). A suspicion began to grow in the back of her mind, one that frightened her far more than the idea that she might be going crazy. Her parents noticed and remarked that she wasn't sleeping well, their 'other' voices chattering with worry; she fended them off as best she could, feeling rather guilty but not seeing what else she could do.

And then, that first Thursday just after glee club (and Mr. Schuester's assignment on a proposal to Miss Pilsbury), she happened to make direct eye contact with Blaine. Instantly, all the voices in her own mind seemed to double, or echo, and underneath them all a single presence radiated fear and suspicion. And she knew - though she could not say how - that the fearful presence was _Blaine's own feeling_. All the voices she was hearing, he was hearing too. He was having vivid, precognitive dreams like hers too (though not identically so). And he was just as frightened of it all as she was.

They stood staring at each other for an instant, and then Blaine put down his head, slammed his locker shut, and almost ran past her. A 'voice' that seemed to be his trailed past her, screaming protests as he went.

Only then did Tina begin to be certain of what exactly it was she (and apparently Blaine) had: some kind of real, actual, honest-to-God _clairvoyance_.

Once she actually confronted herself with the word, it was easier to deal with. She was having dreams of the future, and maybe even the past. She was hearing other people's thoughts. And she _wasn't the only one_.

And she had watched enough movies and TV about fictional clairvoyants whose powers drove them mad to make her decide she'd be damned if she let herself (or Blaine) lose it like that.

So the next day when she had a moment, she grabbed Blaine by the arm and pushed him into an empty room, ignoring his protest of "Tina, what the hell?!"

"I know you can hear the voices too," she said without preamble, turning so that she was directly facing him.

Blaine went still, turning slightly pale, while the voice that she now knew was his own mental dialogue chattered incessantly ( _how the hell could you possibly know that - well, duh, obviously she's been hearing them - if I'm losing it, at least you are too - I have to tell Mom and Dad - who am I kidding, they'd totally flip -_ ). "I've been trying to ignore it," he said aloud, unnecessarily.

"Yeah? How's that been working?" asked Tina.

( _That's none of your business, you meddling hag, why don't you just -_ ) "Honestly, I think I'm losing my mind!" huffed Blaine. "Isn't that the official crazy indicator or something, when you start hearing voices in your head?"

"Sure, but you don't really think that," said Tina, her hands going to her hips. "You know what's really going on. You know you've been hearing what other people are thinking. And you know you can see the future. And you know it's not going to just go away because you ignore it!" She took a breath to calm herself. "Blaine, I'm scared too," she added. "But I'm pretty sure any shot we had at being normal is over, and I don't think we can do anything about it."

Blaine looked at his shoes and shook his head, a wry resignation beginning to stem the tide of his anxious fear. "And I thought being gay made me a freak," he sighed. "Now I'm turning into non-paraplegic Professor X."

"With more hair gel," Tina couldn't help adding, and Blaine laughed a little. "Well, at least we get to be non-paraplegic Professor X's together."

Blaine's smile disappeared. "At least Professor X couldn't see the future," he said. "What're we supposed to do if we see something bad - I mean, _really_ horrible - about to happen? Do we tell people about it?"

Tina bit her lip. "I think we're gonna have to get really good at keeping secrets."

* * *

Because Mr. Schuester was a teacher as well as a choir director, and thus had to do teacher-y things after his last class, the kids usually got to the choir room a little before he did. So that Thursday, once everyone was gathered, Mercedes rudely cut Rachel off right when she was beginning an "inspiring pep talk". "You guys, we gotta talk about something."

"Mercedes," protested Rachel in annoyance. "Regionals is coming up, and while Sectionals was an undeniable triumph -"

"We'll get to Regionals when Mr. Schuester gets here, Rachel," Quinn butted in. "And while we all know how much it killed you to have to sit on the sidelines at Sectionals, this actually affects you just as much as everybody else, so hold it."

Rachel stiffened and eyed Quinn oddly, then seemed to recover herself. "You know what? Fine," she said with an exaggerated air of being put upon, and sat back down by Finn.

"So what's up?" asked Finn, putting an appeasing arm around Rachel (smart fellow).

"Have any of you guys noticed weird stuff happening to you or around you since the accident?" asked Mercedes.

This produced rather interesting results. Most of the club went quiet, shifting in their seats and looking cautiously around while the God Squad watched them all like hawks. Even Santana hung her head and said nothing, which was troubling in itself.

"My hair catches fire," said the last voice that possibly anyone had expected to hear. "And Rory gets electric shocks coming out of his fingers sometimes."

"Maybe _I_ wanted to tell 'em that," protested Rory, looking rather balefully at one Brittany Pierce.

"Shut up, leprechaun," said Santana purely on autopilot.

But for once, Rory shot back at her. "Got anything to share, Lopez?"

Santana gritted her teeth and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. " _No_ , I don't."

"Really?" Brittany looked confused. "Then the thing with the your water glass at Breadstix, that wasn't you? 'Cause you said you thought it was you."

Santana pursed her lips. "Brit, remember how we talked about _how we weren't going to talk about that_?"

Brittany looked even more confused. "But it seemed relevant."

"Okay Mercedes, point well taken," said Kurt hastily, looking around. "So some of us have been experiencing some side effects after the accident -"

"I think we all have, actually," said Blaine Anderson, who had been exchanging glances with Tina Cohen-Chang, of all people. For her part, Tina looked rather uneasy. Mike eyed them both rather questioningly, but said nothing.

"Is there anybody who _hasn't_ had any weird side effects?" inquired Quinn, checking her fellow choir members' faces again.

"I haven't," said Rachel quickly, looking sideways at Finn, who looked uncomfortable.

Kurt's eyes blazed. "Yes you have, Rachel, and you know you have!" he said accusingly. "You're just afraid to acknowledge it because you're afraid you might endanger your dreams of becoming Barbra Streisand 2.0!"

"Whoa, what?" asked an astonished Sam, startled out of silence.

Finn made a sudden violent motion with the hand that was not caressing Rachel. "What, like the same exact thing hasn't been happening to you?" he demanded of his stepbrother.

"Yeah, but at least I'm not in denial about it!" huffed Kurt.

"Guys, what's going on?" asked a rather wary Mr. Schuester, who was just walking in.

The kids snapped to attention, all chorusing something to the effect of "Nothing, Mr. Schue, we're good here." And it was Blaine who had the presence of mind to add, "We haven't made any progress on a song choice for Miss Pilsbury yet."

And so Mr. Schuester's attention was suitably diverted.

For the moment.

* * *

 **More timing notes: I'm assuming that Sam had to have come to Will with the Great Proposal Idea sometime Monday the 16th or Tuesday the 17th, and somehow the New Directions and the synchronized swimming team got everything prepared in two or three days. So if you're interested, this little meeting of the New Directions takes place on the Thursday before the proposal, January 12th.**

 **Also, there is one ND member whom I've left out so far in terms of power hints . . . can you tell me who it is?**


End file.
